New ATI 8.10 Drivers - Excellent

[Vince4Amy]

I decided I'll have another go on one computer which I could not possibly switch to Linux because the ATI X1550 AGP card installed just didn't want to know when it came to Linux. All the past ATI releases could not work with this card however the new Driver works great and detects the card flawlessly.

[handy]

This is the oldest version in my /var/cache/pacman/pkg/ directory:

catalyst-8.3-2-x86_64.pkg.tar.gz

which I installed last March in Arch on an iMac, & I was shocked at the ease of installation. I thought, after all of the bad things I'd read about ATi's drivers that I was going to be in for a hell of a fight, as I have had from time to time with nVidia's products.

The improvement is really noticeable with my GPU, DVD's played so badly that Arch on that machine was useless for playing DVD's. The drivers have been improving & now play DVD's as good as my nVidia equiped machine.

Interestingly, the drivers under Leopard have always been & still are superior to those for Linux, but the gap is certainly closing.

I look forward to the day when I can play Guild Wars under Linux & it looks as good as it does under Leopard.

[PartisanEntity]

I'm looking forward to see how Ubuntu 8.10 functions on my wife's laptop because currently I am battling to get an ATI Radeon Xpress 1100 to stop lagging under 8.04 and it's no fun.

[Vince4Amy]

Yes installing the driver is so easy.

Download it
sudo sh drivername.run
Choose Automatic
sudo aticonfig --initial -f
Reboot

Easy.

[Canis familiaris]

Unfortunately Catalyst 8.10 had problems with WINE so I had to downgrade to Catalyst 8.9 (which IMO was a great version)

[billgoldberg]

I'm looking forward to see how Ubuntu 8.10 functions on my wife's laptop because currently I am battling to get an ATI Radeon Xpress 1100 to stop lagging under 8.04 and it's no fun.

I have the same card and the new drivers are much better.

[Polygon]

Yes installing the driver is so easy.

Download it
sudo sh drivername.run
Choose Automatic
sudo aticonfig --initial -f
Reboot

Easy.

not really...you do

sudo ./atidriverswhatever --buildpkg Ubuntu/hardy
<wait>
sudo dpkg -i *.deb
restart =)

[snova]

When everybody says "better", what are you referring to? Framerate? How much better?

[Canis familiaris]

When everybody says "better", what are you referring to? Framerate? How much better?

bug fixes + faster frame rates + few enhancements to amdcccle + support for more cards
(these are mainly which I found for Catalyst 8.9, 8.10 is bad for me)

[snova]

Oh, good. Because on Windows I could get about 60 FPS on Stellarium but I haven't seen better than 20/30 since I switched. It's not too bad, though.

I just installed fglrx-control. Ahah! So that's what Catalyst is! That's helpful to know.

Now I should be able to download the new drivers from ati.amd.com and build a deb from them, right? That's what I'm trying.